RFC 1312 (rfc1312) - Page 2 of 8

Message Send Protocol 2

RFC 1312                Message Send Protocol 2               April 1992


   cookie, etc.) are case-insensitive. The parts are as follows:

   RECIPIENT      The name of the user that the message is directed to.
                  If this part is empty, the message may be delivered to
                  any user of the destination system.

   RECIP-TERM     The name of the terminal to which the message is to be
                  delivered. The syntax and semantics of terminal names
                  are outside the scope of this specification. If this
                  part is empty, the "right" terminal is chosen. This is
                  a system-dependent function.  If this part consists of
                  the string "*", all terminals on the destination
                  system are implied.  If the RECIPIENT part is empty
                  but the RECIP-TERM is not, the message is written on
                  the specified terminal.  If both the RECIPIENT and
                  RECIP-TERM parts are empty, the message should be
                  written on the "console", which is defined as some
                  place where the message is most likely to be seen by a
                  human operator or administrator.

   MESSAGE        The actual message. The server need not preserve the
                  formatting and white-space content of the message if
                  this is necessary to display it.  New lines should be
                  represented using the usual Netascii CR + LF.
                  (Following the Internet tradition, a server should
                  probably be prepared to accept a message in which some
                  other end-of-line convention is followed, but a
                  conforming client must use CR + LF.)

                  The message text may only contain printable characters
                  from the ISO 8859/1 set, which is upward compatible
                  from USASCII, plus CR, LF and TAB. No other control
                  codes or escape sequences may be included: the client
                  should strip them from the message before it is
                  transmitted, and the server must check each incoming
                  message for illegal codes. (A server may choose to
                  display the message after stripping out such codes, or
                  may reject the entire message.) If the MESSAGE part is
                  empty, the message may be discarded by the server.

   SENDER         The username of the sender. (This and subsequent parts
                  were not present in version 1 of the Message Send
                  Protocol.) This part should not be empty. A server may
                  choose to accept, reject or ignore messages in which
                  the SENDER part is empty.

   SENDER-TERM    The name of the sending user's terminal. This part may
                  be empty. The intention is that a recipient may reply



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